Contingency: in buildings and music

A part of cultural information is buildings according to Borgmann. The information received from a building is realized information. An example that Borgmann goes into great detail about is the Freiburg Minster Church. It took 315 years to build this church. The original plans were for a Romanesque church, but because throughout the 315 years of building there were two different builders. Gothic style became more popular during the later years and that’s why the church became a unique mixture of a Romanesque and Gothic style. Contingency played a major role in the development of the church. Contingency is defined as chance or something unpredictable. The original plans for the church indicated a style of Romanesque, but because of contingency a flavor of Romanesque and Gothic style created a beautiful church. A lot of work is put into coming up with an idea, making the plans, and the physical labor of building. It is appealing how the plans can be very precise and informational, but the final outcome of the building will never exactly match what the plans indicate. For example, I can plan out exactly what pictures I want to use and the backgrounds I want to put in my scrapbook, but the actual constructing it brings new ideas and ways of putting it together. The plans that I made before beginning the project were not an identical match of the final outcome.
This is similar to what happens when music is performed live. There is a score which is the original notes of the music. Music on a CD is perfected to match almost exactly to the score where as music live uses the score as a basis, but goes outside the lines. Due to this difference the sound of music on a CD or radio compared to music live is very different. Part of this difference is because of contingency that Borgmann discusses. I believe this is one reason why live music is more exciting than music from the radio or CD. Concerts are unique because the musicians intend to play what they have written on a score, but there are many parts that are improvised or somewhat unpredictable and you get more of a real feeling of their voice that is not heard from a recording.